Allen in China

I went to Shanghai Cao Yanhua TT School in Bao Shan district this summer. There are 2 Cao Yanhua schools in Shanghai; I went to the lower school with the lower level players. There were 6 groups. I got in group 2. Group 1 was full of 10 year olds that were around 2300. They play so well. I almost beat one of the 2100 players and they told me that I play with spin which gives them a hard time because the people at the school like to play speed. Most of the players in my group didn¡¯t have a very good serve, didn¡¯t have a strong game mentally, didn¡¯t have a very good backhand and they never loop backspin on the backhand side but they could rally really well and they had a really good game defensively and a really consistent forehand. Most of them didn¡¯t train very hard. When I first went I beat 2 people and when left, I beat three fourths of them.

My group 2 coach was probably as good of a coach as Dan Seemiller but since there were 17 people in our group I got very little time to train with just my coach. My coach said my loops were very spinny and not many people could consistently block it so he would always put me with the best practice partners. It was 4.5 hours of training a day from Monday to Saturday and on Sunday there is 2 hours of training and every other week, my group gets the option of extra training for 3 hours in the afternoon on Sunday.

We lived in an apartment reserved for Cao Yanhua TT School. The apartment was very different from American apartments. The rooms had doors that were only closed when it was time to sleep. There are 6 floors. Floors 1 and 2 are not reserved for the school. Floor 3 is for the 4th graders that are male, floor 4 is for the male players that are below 4th grade, the 5th floor is for the girls and the 6th floor is the eating room and the coach's floor. The school is across the street from the apartment. There are lots mosquitoes in the school. I got bit about 100 times. We have nets that we put over our beds at night when we sleep so the mosquitoes don't get in. A lot of times, the mosquitoes get trapped in the net, so the mosquitoes can't fly out and they bite me all night while I sleep.

A friend of mine at Cao Yanhua TT School sold me 2 envelopes with about 20 signatures of Wang Liqin, Ma Lin, Wang Hao and other great players for just 16 RMB which is equivalent to 2 US$. At the school they sold Chinese national team clothing, the one which Ma Lin wore at the 2004 world cup. One of the coaches gave me a picture of Liu Guozheng and Wang Liqin with 2 other referees. I also got a picture of me and Cao Yanhua. There were two other people from America. One went to Cao Yanhua TT School to live and train. She¡¯s from Pennsylvania. There is another kid named Jiang Jiang Gong who went to Cao Yanhua TT School for the summer, he is from New York. There's another kid whose uncle lives in Rochester Hills. There were also 3 kids from Spain, Victor, Migue and another girl who was never introduced. They went there to train for the summer and they didn¡¯t know a lot of Chinese, they were Spanish. After the Spanish kids are done training in Shanghai, they are going to America to play a tournament on September 1st.

In the training area there were 19 tables and there was another room with 6 tables. The coach said in the next one and a half years, they will change the training area and living dormitory completely, by then, it will be one of the world's best training facilities. In the morning we wake up at 7am and sleep at 9pm. There are 2 big groups. Groups 2, 4, 6 are considered in big group one and groups 1, 3, 5 are in big group 2. Big group one trains from 8-10, studies from 10-11, eats lunch from 11 and after group one is done eating they can go play whatever they want in the dormitory. At 12:30 big group one takes a nap to 2:30 and trains until 5 and eats dinner than they are done for the day. Big group 2 studies from 8:30 to 10 and trains from 10 to 12 and comes back to eat lunch. Then at 12:30 they sleep until 2:30 and they go play games at the school such as chess. At 4:20 they eat Dinner and at 6 they train to 8 and they come back to go sleep for the night. The coaches are very strict; they hit and yell at students. The coach never hit me since he said I train very hard and give it my best.

 For breakfast from Monday to Saturday, there are meat bao zhi and sweet bao zhi and rice. (Dan Cao Fan) For lunch and dinner, they are the same all 7 days of the week. For lunch and dinner, there is rice, soup and about 3 or 4 different selections of food available where you can choose what you want to eat. On Saturday the training is slightly different. Big group one trains from 2 to 3:40 and big group 2 trains from 3:50 to 5. After Saturday training, the parents can pick them up to go back home and bring them back on Sunday or Monday. I stayed at the school since I liked the training on Sunday. I had to leave a week early since we bought standby airplane tickets. In my brief little explanation of my 45.5 days of training I must have left out something. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.